Environment

By Dave Murphy Fiddling while the planet burns would be an apt response to the government’s latest climate action plan. While the document is laced with warnings about the urgency of the need to tackle climate change, it is devoid of ideas or proposals that will make the necessary economic and societal changes required to prevent the impending catastrophe. Instead it ...

By Jess Spear The new HBO docudrama series Chernobyl debuted in May and quickly gathered a global following, becoming the top rated TV series of all time. The gripping storyline takes you from the scene of disaster on 26 April, 1985 when an explosion occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine, and follows one Soviet nuclear scientist’s ...

By Keishia Taylor Who causes the climate crisis? Twenty five companies are responsible for more than half of the entire world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988! In a greenwashing frenzy, companies are falling over themselves to create an image of sustainability and tackling climate change, while acting in the interests of profit, not our planet. We need to take the ...

Individualizing the cause of climate change will only conceal the truth. A study published in the journal Climate Change indicated that since the dawn of the Industrial Era just 90 companies have caused two thirds of all man-made global warming emissions. All but seven of the 90 were energy companies producing oil, gas and coal.

To develop a carbon-neutral global economy, economic and political power must be taken out of the hands of the ‘noxious 90’, writes Manny Thain. Predictably, empty words were all that came out of the UN-sponsored climate talks in Warsaw – the 19th climate summit since Rio 1992. Despite the latest IPCC report that the threat is even greater than previously ...

During a protest against the drilling for oil in the Arctic by the Russian company, Gazprom, 30 Greenpeace activists and journalists were arrested after their boat was boarded and seized by armed Russian border police.

This September, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a highly anticipated report detailing the latest findings on global warming. Drawn from the meticulous, peer-reviewed studies of over 800 leading scientists, the IPCC document refutes claims that climate change is uncertain, in decline, or not caused by human activity.

Biofuels are fuels that are produced from living or geologically recent organisms such as plants. These have long been regarded by some as a possible alternative to fossil fuels and contributor in solving the environmental crisis facing the planet as a renewable form of energy. In September of this year the European Parliament is due to discuss changes in EU biofuel policies.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the main cause of global warming, has reached a critical level. Carbon dioxide is released by the burning of coal, gas and oil, so called fossil fuels.

The latest UN-sponsored climate talks in Doha in December ended in total failure – just as previous summits have. Friends of the Earth called the talks a "disaster zone" and Greenpeace asked of the negotiators: "What planet are you on?" As usual, the capitalist politicians taking part tried to talk up the outcome. Ed Davey, Lib Dem climate change minister, claimed that "it is genuine progress... It is a bigger step forward than people have given us credit for".